Blocking the Tocks Island Dam

This story was originally published in the Pocono Record on August 13, 2001

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finally evicted squatters from the Delaware River valley in 1974, but found it had lost the "war" for public support to build the 37-mile Tocks Island dam.

Support waned as cost projections skyrocketed and the burgeoning national environmental movement took hold. Still, it was a slow death for the dam project. Congress waited until 1992 to firmly and finally de-authorize it.

Initial $100 million-project cost estimates rose by 1975 to at least $400 million. As U.S. involvement in the costly Vietnam war peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, less money was available each year for the Tocks Island dam.

"It was cold, hard cash, or the lack of it rather, that kept dam building from occurring," said Richard C. Albert in his book, "Damming the Delaware." "The delay in funding brought about by the Vietnam war was the single most important reason the dam was never built."

In 1975 the Delaware River Basin Commission — an advisory group on river issues comprised of representatives of the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Delaware, and the federal government — voted 3-1 with one abstention asking Congress to de-authorized the project. Then-Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp was the last holdout for building the dam.

"What is the Delaware River valley going to do for water in 25 years?" Maurice K. Goddard, Shapp's secretary of Environmental Resources lamented after the vote. "Tocks Island is the only answer I know. We need the flood control, the water supply."

Environmental groups, however, were ecstatic, vowing to complete the job by having Congress vote to de-authorize the dam. Even the National Park Service and Army Corps reversed course, recommending de-authorization of the Tocks dam.

In 1978 President Jimmy Carter recommended ending the project, proposing to add the middle portion of the Delaware to the national scenic river system, a measure of protection from development. Later that year Congress agreed.

Shapp unsuccessfully filed a federal suit to prevent the designation.

The DRBC produced a 1979 study recommending that the dam be placed on the back burner until 2000, after which various options would be explored.

A 1981 DRBC study also refused to rule out the Tocks dam, arguing the project might eventually be needed to relieve droughts. That year dam opponent Monroe County Commissioner Nancy Shukaitis testified that the wild and scenic rivers designation already precluded the possibility of a dam.

But by 1981, most people assumed the dam proposal was a dead issue and began focusing on a future Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area using property the Army Corps had taken for the water project.

The federal government — this time the National Park Service, without the Army Corps — continued to buy land in the DWGNRA. In 1979 the NPS bought 61 tracts, or 1,305 acres, for about $3.9 million. That brought the spending total for government land takeovers to more than $65 million.

Unlike the previous policy of forcefully taking property from owners through eminent domain, the Park Service began buying land from "willing sellers" as federal funds became available. Exceptions included a few properties against which the Army Corps introduced condemnation proceedings before turning them over to the Park Service, and properties threatened by development.

In 1979, NPS Regional Director Richard Stanton said his agency would eventually acquire an interest in all properties along a 38-mile stretch of the newly designated "wild and scenic" riverfront. The Park Service moved on other fronts as well, including opening a park headquarters on River Road in Middle Smithfield.

The NPS unveiled a revised plan for the park, based on multiple passive recreation along the river, rather than extensive swimming and powerboating on a 37-mile lake the dam would have created.